Develop the poker mind-set: Think long-term

The measuring stick of any poker player is the decisions they make. If you make good decisions you win: If you make poor decisions you lose. Yes, it’s that simple!

Every decision you make has a long-term expected value (EV). The EV of a decision is what you will win (or lose) on average in the long-run. For example: In a $10/$20 limit Hold’ Em game, betting the nuts on the river has a positive expected value (+EV) of $20 (if your opponent calls every time you will expect to make $20 every time you make this decision): Folding your Big Blind every time in the same $10/$20 game has a -EV of $10 (you can expect to lose $10 every time you make this decision).

Very rarely are decisions so cut and dry. Even the -$10EV Big Blind scenario is more complex than it first appears. If you normally lose an average of $3 in the BB, then the EV of folding every hand is -$7. However if you lose $12 a hand in the BB (maybe you defend almost every time) than the EV of folding is actually +$2!

The question then becomes, why do so many players make such poor decisions? These players make poor decisions because they play in the short-term, and are basing their play on the assumption that poker is a whole lot of luck. EV does not enter their thoughts; the only thing they are thinking about is how the guy in the blue sweatshirt just caught an inside straight -and won a monster pot, so maybe I can too!

Even the best players have leaks in their game. While these mistakes are not as pronounced, or as often, as drawing to an inside straight, they do exist. Some players fall in love with a favorite hand (Doyle Brunson can’t resist a T2); some have trouble comprehending a concept like position, and others may be too liberal defending their blind. Whatever the case, there are a plethora of leaks for decent players to acquire at the felt.

In poker: Winning is the result of good decisions, not the other way around.

You will find most of your opponents have this concept backwards. They feel if they win the pot they did something right (they don’t realize luck runs both ways, and there is something called good luck). The fact that you won the hand doesn’t mean you made a good decision! A decision is only good if it is +EV in the long-run.

Great poker players have to be able to trick their mind into ignoring what they’re eyes are seeing, and take a long-term approach to the game. It’s not easy to ignore the short-term luck of the game and focus on making ‘correct’ long-term decisions. Bad beats can tilt the most Zen-like player, and a disciplined player could easily get swept up in a gambling atmosphere. Your goal in poker is quite simple: Get your money into the pot when the odds are in your favor, and live with the consequences.

Players who rely on hunches, or are ignorant of the game’s strategies, are results oriented. They look at what happened (or would have happened had they done something differently); instead of looking at what is suppose to happen. The only EV they are aware of is Rachel Ray’s EVOO [extra virgin olive oil for you non-cooks out there]. Results oriented players feel that in any given hand, the ends justify the means. Just remember, especially when you take a horrendous beat at one of their feet, these players are the lifeblood of the poker community.

In poker: You will make more money from your opponents’ mistakes than you will from your good plays.

It’s extremely important you understand this concept. Poker is a battle of mistakes; the player making the fewest, and least costly mistakes, is the player who will be taking home the money at the end of the night. If you play in a game where your opponents commit more mistakes than you, you will come out on top, regardless of your skill level. Basically, to win in poker all you have to do is look for players that are worse than you!

This holds true for any poker game, regardless of who is sitting at the table. If the five best players in the world are sitting at a particular table, and the 6^th best player pulls up a chair, guess who is going to be the fish in the game?